She was found dead after a tent encampment fire. Her smile is what her family will remember
CBC
Rae Tyler's smile will be what her family remembers most.
In every photograph — from those as a toddler, to more recent family snapshots of the 33-year-old woman — Tyler wears the same show-stopping grin.
It never disappeared, said her father, Winston Tyler, no matter how difficult things got over the last three years of living in a tent in Saint John.
"Even when it was the worst times, she was always smiling," her father said. "Because she said it'd get better."
Rae and 35-year-old Jonathan Calhoun were identified by police on Friday as the two people found dead after a fire at a tent encampment on Paradise Row on March 25. Police in Saint John said the cause of their deaths is still under investigation.
"I just want to tell her that I'm so sorry that I failed her and just hold her," her father said through tears. "I told her every day I loved her, and I'm so glad that the last time that we talked that I did tell her that I loved her, and she told me that she loved me."
At least five people experiencing homelessness have died in New Brunswick in the last 12 months. Evan McArthur, 44, died in a tent fire in January. Another man lost part of a leg and a foot to frostbite.
It comes as the cost of housing has skyrocketed in the province, and the number of people without a home in the three major cities has nearly doubled since 2021.
Though Rae had been living in a tent for more than three years, her father said it wasn't a place she wanted to be. She referred to one of the sites where she camped as "death alley."
She moved into a rooming house last year only to be displaced by a fire. She stayed in shelters on and off, but her mental health and addiction problems caused her to struggle with the rules. That also made it difficult for her to live with her father in recent years, though she had lived with him in the past.
Her father said she wanted to get off the streets, but it was impossible to find a rent she could afford on social assistance.
"I want people to know that Rae wasn't just a drug addict on the street," he said. "Rae was so much more. She was fighting and fighting for something but not getting anywhere because she had nowhere to go."
Life wasn't easy for Rae from the moment she entered the world. She was born through an emergency C-section, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.
As a child, she was always happy and full of life, always wanting to be around her friends and to take care of them.
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